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A RESOLUTION
26-11
IN THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
January 7, 2025
To declare the existence of an emergency with respect to the need to amend the Rental Housing
Act of 1985 to limit the adjustment of general applicability of the rent charged in rent
stabilized units.
RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, That this resolution
may be cited as the “Rent Stabilized Housing Inflation Protection Continuation Emergency
Declaration Resolution of 2025”.
Sec. 2. (a) Under the Rental Housing Act of 1985, annual rent increases for units in certain
older buildings are limited to inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage
Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) plus an additional 2% and as approved by the Rental
Housing Commission in the District.
(b) In January 2020, the Rental Housing Commission approved an increase of 3.0%
for May 1, 2020, through April 30, 2021, for rent stabilized units.
(c) In March 2020, the Council voted to suspend rent increases of any amount in
the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, including rent increases in rent stabilized units.
(d) In January 2021, the Rental Housing Commission approved a 3.0% increase for
rent stabilized units, though the Council’s prohibition on rent increases remained in effect.
(e) On December 31, 2021, the Council lifted the prohibition on rent increases,
allowing landlords to give 30 days’ notice to tenants of proposed rent increases that could
begin no sooner than February 1, 2022, and that, in rent stabilized units, could result in a
maximum increase of 3.0%, per the Rental Housing Commission’s approved rate.
(f) In January 2022, the Rental Housing Commission approved a 6.2% overall
increase to rents, which was in effect from May 1, 2022, through April 30, 2023.
(g) In January 2023, the Rental Housing Commission approved an 8.9% overall
increase to rents in rent stabilized units, which took effect on May 1, 2023, resulting in a
total increase to rents of 15.1% over two years and 18.1% over three years.
(h) Under District law, landlords must provide at least 60 days’ notice of a rent
increase to tenants in rent stabilized units and may only issue a notice of an increase once
during a 12-month period at any time throughout the year.
(i) Except for tenants who qualify, apply for, and received a maximum 5% increase
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in rent because they are elderly or a person with a disability, tenants subject to the
maximum 8.9% increase from 2023 faced the highest rental increase in the history of the
District’s rent stabilization program by more than 1.0%; the next highest increase was
7.6% and occurred over 30 years ago in 1990.
(j) While landlords expressed concerns about the impact of rising maintenance and business
expenses on their ability to serve their tenants and maintain their businesses, tenants and tenant
advocates also raised serious concerns that an 8.9% increase would have contributed to significant
hardship for many of the households living in the over 70,000 rent stabilized units in the District
and may have led to the displacement of residents with lower incomes.
(k) In response, in June 2023, the Council unanimously passed the Rent Stabilized Housing
Inflation Protection Amendment Act of 2023 and the Rent Stabilized Housing Inflation Protection
Temporary Amendment Act of 2023, to mitigate this displacement risk and preserve the District’s
affordable housing stock.
(l) In March 2024, the Council passed the Rent Stabilized Housing Inflation Protection
Continuation Emergency Amendment Act of 2024 and the Rent Stabilized Housing Inflation
Protection Continuation Temporary Amendment Act of 2024 to continue these protections.
(m) The Council’s legislation set a 4% annual cap in rent between July 1, 2023, and April
30, 2025, for units occupied by residents who are elderly or who have a disability, or for units that
are co-leased by a home and community-based services waiver, and the legislation set a 6% cap for
all other rent stabilized units.
(n) The Council’s legislation also set 8% and 12% cumulative caps, respectively, between
May 1, 2023, and April 30, 2025, to support tenants who already faced the 5% or 8.9% increase
between May 1, 2023, and June 30, 2023.
(o) The existing temporary legislation will expire on January 12, 2025. Emergency
legislation is therefore necessary to ensure tenants and the District’s affordable housing
stock are still protected by the annual cap and the 2-year cumulative cap.
Sec. 3. The Council of the District of Columbia determines that the circumstances
enumerated in section 2 constitute emergency circumstances making it necessary that the Rent
Stabilized Housing Inflation Protection Continuation Emergency Amendment Act of 2025 be
adopted after a single reading.
Sec. 4. This resolution shall take effect immediately.